大象传媒

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Having been born less than a year before the outbreak of war, I grew up not knowing any other life than bombing raids, air raid shelters, and the resulting damage.
My Mother had developed a pattern of life to deal with the repeated nocturnal disruptions. At teatime she would go into the shelter, and light the paraffin stove, and place a full kettle of water on the top of it. This meant that, irrespective of the time that we had to go into the shelter, there would normally be a kettle of boiling water available for hot drinks.
Living at Clapham Junction, it meant that rarely a night went by without the sirens sounding. Despite the attentions of the Luftwaffe, I believe that the number of times they actually hit the railway could be counted on the fingers of one hand. It was usually the neighbouring streets that received the pounding.
I remember one instanCtvividly in 1944. My grandparents were visiting from Gateshead, and we had all gone for a walk on Clapham Common when the sirens sounded the alarm. As we were some distance from the public shelters, my parents and grandparents decided that we were probably reasonably safe out in the open, as the "All Clear" would sound before we could get to the nearest refuge. We then heard a low droning sound which developed into a V1 "Doodlebug" appearing in the sky. We watched as it came closer until its motor cut out, and it started its downward arc until we heard the explosion as it found its random target.
On the way home we passed a cobbler's with a hole in the roof, and smoke rising through the opening.
A few days later there was an air raid alert before breakfast, and for some reason we did not go into the shelter. My sister and I were in bed listening to the bombs, when for some reason we dived underneath the bedding and almost immediately a bomb landed at the end of our street blowing the windows in and covering the bed with broken glass. My mother, sister and I went with my grandparents when they returned home, and spent the last year of the war in Gateshead.

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